Year's best, sort of

I often post something about the best books read in the year just ended. This year I thought I would use some of the superlatives employed in the book Remarkable Reads, which I reviewed last week. Let's give it a try.

Phaedra Patrick

Most Enchanting Book: The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper by Phaedra Patrick. A widower discovers his late wife's charm bracelet, and those charms reveal a life before their marriage that he knew nothing about. Truly enchanting.

Most Important Book: Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens. A wealthy man fakes his own death to discover if the woman pledged to him will love him for himself, not for his money. Of course, this being Dickens, there is much, much more going on.

Most Daunting Book: Middlemarch by George Eliot. I started this novel in college, and it took me more than 50 years to finish it. Now that's daunting.

Wisest Book: No Time to Spare by Ursula le Guin. This collection of essays from the blog Le Guin wrote in the years before her death last year is packed with wisdom about literature and life.

Most Eloquent Book: My Antonia by Willa Cather. A successful man remembers an immigrant girl who grow up on a neighboring farm and is delighted when they meet again after many years and he discovers harsh prairie life has not changed her at all. This beautifully written book turned 100 in 2018.

Most Familiar Book: The Return of the Moguls by Dan Kennedy. Kennedy writes that if newspapers are going to survive, it may depend upon wealthy individual owners, not newspaper chains, to show the way. As a newspaper veteran, I found myself nodding in agreement with much of what he says.

Most Incomprehensible Book: Version Control by Dexter Palmer. Time travel itself seems incomprehensible to me. Palmer's book ranks among the best time-travel novels I've read, but it's even more incomprehensible than most.

Most Beautiful Book: The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters. A woman and her grown daughter let out part of their house to a flamboyant young couple. What follows is a secret romance, then a secret crime. Waters builds her novel slowly into a thriller, while maintaining the grace of her prose throughout.

Most Fearless Book: Antifragile by Nassim N. Taleb. Taleb skewers bankers. intellectuals and others while advancing his idea that true success means not just withstanding setbacks but growing from them. He doesn’t seem to care whom he offends.

Most Surprising Book; The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben. Do trees feel pain? Do they communicate with one another? Do they nurse their young? Wohlleben says they do.

Donald Ray Pollock

Most Disappointing Book: Cinemaps by Andrew deGraff. The author draws colorful maps showing the movement of characters in favorite movies. This may sound like fun, but those maps are too confusing to give much pleasure, other than through the beauty of the images themselves.

Most Unpleasant Book: The Heavenly Table by Donald Ray Pollack. Three Georgia brothers of very little brain turn to crime after the death of their father, then head for the border (the Canadian border) on horseback. I loved the novel, but Pollack spares none of the unpleasant details.

Most Luminous Book: Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. An opera singer and other party guests are held hostage by a band of young terrorists. In time the captivity begins to seem more rewarding than the party. No wonder this novel is a favorite among Patchett readers.